My work uses interdisciplinary and ethnographic approaches to transform understanding of key global public health issues including antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and infectious disease, building on longstanding research in Asia into medical plurality, treatment-seeking and inequalities in access to care.  I am an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and have published over 100 peer-reviewed articles as well as two edited books, the latest of which is Abrams, S., Lambert, H. and Robinson, J (eds) How to live through a pandemic (Routledge, 2023).

I am interested in the application of anthropological perspectives to a range of public health issues. These include:

Anthropological and interdisciplinary research on antimicrobial resistance

HIV prevention and sexual health in vulnerable communities in South Asia, with a particular focus on sex work

Popular understandings of health, illness and therapy

Non-biomedical therapeutic traditions in India within and outside the formal health sector

Social and cultural dimensions of health systems

Lay understandings of suicide and suicide prevention in social and kinship networks

The role of ethnographic and other forms of qualitative research evidence in the formulation and evaluation of public health interventions